The Safety Dance (May 5, 2009)
NOTES: Origins and Context | See Also
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Origins of this content
This 2009 blog post engages in online dialogue with two new media blogs: Open Culture, "the best free cultural & educational media on the web," and Groundswell, "dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism."
Contextualization
Culture jamming "sticks where rational discourse slides off. It is, simply, the viral introduction of radical ideas. It is viral in that it uses the enemy's own resources to replicate itself—corporate logos, marketing psychology, clean typography, 'adspeak.' It is radical because—ideally—the message, once deciphered, causes damage to blind belief."[cit]

Detournement and recuperation ("radical" ideas and images being commodified and incorporated within mainstream society[cit]) are terms from Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967).

Guy Debord was a founding member of the Situationist International, a liberatarian group that formed in response to the May 1968 a protests in Paris. "The way out of the Situationists was not to wait for a distant revolution but to reinvent everyday life here and now. To transform the perception of the world and to change the structure of society is the same thing. By liberating oneself, one changed power relations and therefore transformed society."[cit]
My blog aggregator has been overstuffed with videos of culture jams:

From Open Culture: "Last Thursday, in London's Trafalgar Square, a big crowd of 13,500 got together and sang 'Hey Jude.' The project was arranged somewhat spontaneously by T-Mobile."

Via Groundswell: "Last Thursday at noon, forty revelers invaded Barcelona's unemployment office. Members of the Spanish art collective En Medio brought levity to the typically frustrated and forlorn faces of those waiting in line, the victims of capitalism's latest crisis."

Detournement/recuperation, who knows?

DIY/punk, who notices?

T-Mobile/art-collective, who cares?